


The Dark At the End of Everything

by MaeWestKozi



Category: Artifacts - Fandom, The Darkness (Comics), Witchblade (Comics)
Genre: Darkness Falls Fix-It, Gen, Temporary Character Death, canon character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 03:19:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4650273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaeWestKozi/pseuds/MaeWestKozi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jackie Estacado is dead. Only this time, it looks to be permanent. Sara has the blood of The Darkness on her hands, and the world is coming apart at the seams.<br/>Tom Judge watches The Darkness unravel before his eyes - on a journey through Hell it is confirmed that Estacado's soul is not rotting away where it should be.<br/>The Ancient Ones are closing in, close to building their final paradise on Earth, and time is running out. Will the remaining bearers of the Artifacts be able to stem the incoming tides of The End?</p><p>((Takes place after Darkness #116, Witchblade #181, Artifacts #32 - A Fix-It for "Darkness Falls".))</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dark At the End of Everything

It starts and ends with Hope. Hope and the Survivor. The thirteen Artifacts were brought together, and the universe was wiped clean into a fresh start. The Survivor did not live through the experience, the codex for his lost universe gone with him, leaving behind only the endless pale of nothingness, and Hope. Through the young girl, her parents were connected, and out of the nothing they appeared to comfort her - her mother, Sara Pezzini and bearer of the Artifact, the Witchblade. And Jackie Estacado, the chosen avatar of The Darkness; the primal and chaotic forces of creation.

“Hope? There you are - I was so afraid I’d lost you,” Sara breathed, wrapping her armor clad arms gently around the small form of her child. Hope’s brown eyes crinkled in delight as she responded with a pleased giggle.

“Waiting for mama.”

Sara couldn’t help but smile, even in knowing that everything else is gone, the simple joy of the love she feels for her daughter was enough to comfort her. At least until another made themselves known. “Sara?”

She turned, looking from the corner of her eye, half hoping and half afraid of what she would find there. But she knew it was him from the deep, smoke roughened timbre of his voice, of the strange echo it holds within it, even as Jackie Estacado walked from the pale mists of the Nothing and into view. He looked strange, wrapped from his feet all the way to his brow in the dark armor of The Darkness - out of place in brightness of the nothing without shade nor shadow to define him. He walked up behind her, the furrow of his brow giving away his concern as he reached around Sara’s sides to hold both her and their child in a protective embrace.

“That’s a relief. You’re both here... Wherever ‘here’ is. I haven’t seen anyone or anything,” Jackie murmured, the armor falling away from his face as he sighed. “I... I think we’re the only ones.”

“At least we’re together,” Sara replied, though her voice wavered. Jackie’s arms tightened around her briefly in an attempt at comfort, and it made Sara uneasy. Despite their whirlwind bout of affection and care over the last few days, Estacado both frightened and vexed her in equal measures - too often has he been in the position of the villain. But her misgivings were shoved to the side with Hope’s pleased exclamation of, “Dada!”

It startled a laugh out of Jackie, a rare and genuine smile breaking across his face. In part to hide a renewed rush of attraction for him, and in part out of genuine curiosity, Sara took this moment to voice out loud a question that had been bothering her ever since she found herself in this blank nothingness. Like the entirety of their surroundings was a white sheet of paper, waiting for those first brush strokes.

“What is this place?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s what happens when all thirteen Artifacts come together. Everything was undone. All that’s left is... ‘this’,” Jackie answered slowly, waving one Darkness-clawed hand around at the vast expanse of the Nothing.

“Then I don’t understand why we’re here. Why we’re alive. How do I even have the Witchblade again? How do you have The Darkness?” Sara shivered at the memory of having the Witchblade ripped from her, of Jackie’s agonized screams as The Darkness was torn from him by the Survivor’s machines.

“I don’t know,” Jackie started, but then paused, frowning. “The Survivor said Hope is come sort of ‘codex’, right? That has to be part of it...our connection to her. The Survivor said he was the same thing, a Codex waiting to be imprinted on a new universe. But obviously he didn’t, probably because I tore half his face off. And neither did Hope. It’s like reality is waiting for instructions. ...And the instructions are inside Hope.”

A sinking feeling suddenly took root in Sara’s gut. She has never felt healthier or stronger, more in tune with herself and her powers than ever before, and yet a chill just ran its way up and down her spine. Beneath the living armor of the Witchblade her skin is mapped in gooseflesh. “You heard what the Survivor said. If Hope dies, the next universe can’t come to pass. Are we supposed to choose between our child and the universe?”

Jackie recoiled from Sara at the implication before reaching out to touch the edge of the cloth wrapped around their daughter. “I’m not saying that’s the answer. There’s always another option.” Left unsaid is his own hopelessness regarding this ‘other option’, and it echoed in the flatness of his voice. Jackie knew it just as certainly as Sara could feel it churning in her gut - in order to save the world, to bring the universe itself back on track, their daughter had to die. Hope Pezzini was the metaphorical reset button.

“Is there? Everything’s gone. But Hope can bring it back.”

Jackie was horror-struck, his eyes wide in realized fear. He was well aware how he was often cast into the role of the villain by the other bearers of the Artifacts, and by Sara in particular. But now he found himself having the strange feeling that positions were reversed... that innocent life is in danger and that he was now in the role of protector. “Sara, you can’t be serious. You’re talking about-!”

“Don’t you think I know what I’m talking about?!” Sara whirled around, facing Jackie head on. Her expression was contorted in a rictus of emotional pain, fat tears streaming down her cheeks. She was now hyperventilating, her breaths stuttering into grief-ridden hiccups. The prospect of harming hope was visibly tearing her apart. And Jackie was terrified, because he could see the resolve forming behind her eyes in her fear and sadness.

But Jackie was not the sort to accept this. To him, family was everything. From the values ingrained in him by his mafia upbringing, to his limited contact with his mother in her last moments, to his estrangement from his sister, Capris... Jackie Estacado held the ideal of a family higher than almost anything else. “After everything we went through to get Hope back? You’re not thinking straight, Sara-!”

“That’s what’s so terrible... I am thinking straight,” Sara interrupted him. She knew that if she lets him, Jackie would convince her otherwise. That for the well-being of one little girl - his child - that he would doom everything else. She clenched her eyes shut tight for a moment, pointedly ignoring the small voice inside herself that cried out against her choice and her resolve... Hope was her child, too. “If I could, I’d trade places with her in a heartbeat. But I can’t. ...How are we supposed to weigh one life against the lives of billions? It’s the only choice that makes sense.”

“You’re right...” Tears were pouring down Jackie’s face, pale with a fear he had never felt before. For a moment, Sara was relieved that he understands, that she’s not alone in her pain. But the moment passes with his next words: “But I can’t let you do it,” he pleaded, reaching out towards her, towards Hope.

Sara curled herself around their child, backing away from him, putting distance - the distance of the Nothing - between them. “It’s not your choice. Please Jackie, don’t make this any harder than it already is.” Sara knew he wouldn’t listen. But this isn’t about him, or her. It’s about Hope. She lifted the young girl - her girl - and rests her forehead against Hope’s own. “I know you don’t understand, sweetie. But this is about so much more than you or me. This is about... everything. You can save everything that ever was. Maybe this is what you were always meant to do,” she breathed out. Maybe, if she can place the onus of this on Fate... maybe...what she was about to do wouldn’t be her fault.

“Mama sad,” Hope burbled softly, tangling her fingers in Sara’s auburn hair. Out of view of the child, the Witchblade began reshaping itself around her hand, forming into a long and pointed claw on her index finger. Sharp enough to kill her own child before she could feel any pain.

The sight of the weapon pointing towards Hope sent Jackie into a frenzy, and he rushed towards them, hands outstretched and reaching for his child, to snatch her away from Sara and never let her go. “Sara, you can’t! You can’t do this to our family! There must be another way!” His voice cracked with his anguish - he knows he won’t be quick enough to stop her.

“It has to be this way!” Sara’s backhand knocked him to his knees, four gouges burning across his face from the sharpened points of her fingers.

“Sara, don’t! Not like this!” Scrambling to his feet, Jackie threw himself between them, forcing his own taloned hands in front of Sara, prying what remained of his child away from her. He was too late - Hope was dead. With a guttural yell, Jackie lashed out with The Darkness, tearing Sara apart from the inside out, and mixed with the blood from his wound and the power slumbering inside the dead husk of his daughter, Jackie Estacado fashioned a new universe, in his own image.

And there is a crack in the mirrored wall of reality.

**Author's Note:**

> References and credit for the dialogue belong to Top Cow - Artifacts #13. First couple of chapters will be a bit of a re-hash on events in Artifacts and The Darkness and Witchblade, and then things will take off into their own AU-land.  
> This fic was born from my raging at the ending of The Darkness #116, and Jackie's canon death in Witchblade. I hope you all enjoy.


End file.
